That said, Max Verstappen looked entirely ready to fight for pole position at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez before a wild final run unraveled in the stadium section. The Red Bull driver sat second after the opening Q3 runs, but while his rivals found extra pace on their second attempts, the four-time World Champion failed to improve after running deep at the Turn 13 hairpin right after passing Lando Norris' McLaren.
That mistake dropped the Dutchman to fourth in the session, and a one-place grid penalty picked up for a practice collision with Liam Lawson on Friday pushes him down to start fifth for Sunday's race. Verstappen made it clear exactly where the lap went wrong.
Very [frustrating] because the car is as competitive as the last couple of weekends and we produce a lap worthy of P-nowhere. To be P7, I'm lucky.
"Already going into Turn 12 I had a car very close to me, so I already lost time there with the dirty air," Verstappen said. "Then going into the hairpin, instead of going on the left, I had one car on my right where you normally want to open up the corner.
He continued describing the chaotic geometry of the moment: "It's a bit of an awkward angle then how you have to go into the hairpin, plus you lose your reference on the right hand side where you are constantly looking, because it's a difficult corner to get right. That then killed my lap but I think for me the most promising thing is of course how we turned it around because in practice I was not very happy. Qualifying was good, we were fighting for pole for sure."
Down in the other Red Bull garage, team mate Isack Hadjar suffered through a bruising session of his own, wrestling persistent brake issues on his way to a P7 start. Despite the gritty result, the Frenchman held nothing back in his assessment of the machine.
"I just don't know how to drive it. It's fast, it's just not really drivable and I just sucked really," said Hadjar. "Very [frustrating] because the car is as competitive as the last couple of weekends and we produce a lap worthy of P-nowhere. To be P7, I'm lucky."
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